Tasoulla Hadjiyanni
Toward
Culturally Sensitive Housing - Translating Research into Practice
Abstract
Minnesota’s
cultural landscape has changed drastically in the last few decades—among
others, the state is now home to thousands of Hmong and Somali
refugees while the Latino population is constantly growing. Designers, affordable housing providers, facility managers,
and policy makers now find themselves serving cultural groups
they know little about. With
limited time, funds, and energy to invest in understanding cultural
differences in housing needs, they struggle to define how residential
environments must be to meet diverse needs and support various
ways of living, i.e. culturally sensitive housing. A vehicle for preventing and reducing educational and health disparities, culturally sensitive housing is instrumental to the well-being of children, youth,
and families.
The questions
encountered by those working around issues of housing are many:
1)
What are the particular housing
needs of newcomers and their families?
2)
How can we best help them
integrate into our community? And,
3)
Which cultural practices should
we be considering when building new facilities and when planning
for suitable housing arrangements?
“Toward culturally sensitive housing – Translating research
into practice” fills the current informational gap by supporting
the development of culturally
sensitive programmatic guidelines and training materials. Using data from a cross-cultural study of differences in housing
needs among five Twin Cities immigrant and minority groups (Hmong,
Somali, Mexicans, Ojibwe, and African-Americans), the study identifies
what must be considered when responding to the problem of culture
in design. Explorations revolve around the similarities
and differences in how residential environments are used by the
above five cultural groups and the difficulties encountered because
of differences with mainstream practices.
With access to such knowledge, Minnesota’s housing organizations
can be a catalyst for re-evaluating what affordable housing means
and how it is pursued. With
housing that is more inclusive and that can be used equally well
by all groups of people, the needs of children, youth, and families
can be accounted for while the educational and health disparities
can be reduced.
